


unlearn the constellations

by thecryoftheseagulls



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Interfacers, Keith Has Some Underdiagnosed ADHD, M/M, Outer Space, Pre-Canon, Space Opera, media fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-04-08 08:31:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14101458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecryoftheseagulls/pseuds/thecryoftheseagulls
Summary: Keith doesn't set out to be a pilot. His childhood dream is to be an interfacer, that person on a starship whose job it is to open themselves up to the songs of data and history and poetry carried in the empty space between the stars. He watches his hero, Takashi Shirogane, forge a path as the first interfacer-pilot in Garrison history, and when Keith looks up at the night sky, he dreams of joining him up there in the stars.





	1. prelude

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosemaryandtime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosemaryandtime/gifts).
  * Inspired by [in the space between us](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13800450) by [lilithiumwords](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilithiumwords/pseuds/lilithiumwords). 



> This story is 100% inspired by [lilithiumwords'](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilithiumwords) space opera [in the space between us](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13800450/chapters/31728621), which I highly recommend to any Yuri on Ice fan. I thought her interfacer concept would be fantastic in a Voltron au, so here we are.
> 
> Dedicated to [rosemaryandtime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosemaryandtime), cheerleader extraordinaire.
> 
> The title for this fic comes from a line in the poem [Tear It Down](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/tear-it-down) by Jack Gilbert.

**Interfacer**

> The most dangerous position aboard a spacecraft, an interfacer’s job is to serve as a conduit for information. They open themselves up to the flow of data that occurs naturally between celestial objects, and pass that data on to a ship’s computers for analysis. So far this process has only been achieved by humans; the data stream seems to require a human mind to decipher it, even if the volume of information an interfacer encounters is much too vast to truly comprehend. To that end, an interfacer’s suit records everything they encounter, and that data is then stored and mined by computers for usable information. However, the act of interfacing is a huge mental strain on the interfacer, and if proper precautions are not met, it can lead to insanity or death.
> 
> (Editor’s Note: Some scholars theorize that an interfacer, if left in the data stream too long, may actually achieve a state of oneness with the celestial energy they are immersed in, and somehow thus ascend to an existence of pure energy, leaving their physical reality behind. There has yet to be a documentable instance where such an ascension has occurred, and most scholars agree that an interfacer left too long simply suffers the magnified effects of extreme mental over-exertion).

\-- From _Astroexploration: A Dictionary of Terms_ by Mohammad Nomusa


	2. easy stars are not ours

Keith is eight the first time he says he wants to be an interfacer.

“Okay, class,” Ms. Carmen says, at the front of his third grade classroom after their unit on occupations. “What do you want to be when you grow up? I want you each to write it down and draw me a picture, and then we’ll all share with the class.”

Keith, too young yet to hate the question of who he will be, what he will do, what he wants most in the world, draws a stick figure wearing red and yellow, his favorite colors. He draws a red helmet and visor over the face, and then he spends the rest of the assignment time making the background, until in the drawing he’s floating, suspended, in a field of glowing stars.

“Keith, tell us about your drawing,” Ms. Carmen says when it’s his turn, and Keith stands beside his desk and holds it up dutifully.

“I’m gonna be an interfacer!” he announces, fiercely. “See, here I am, in my interfacer suit.”

“And what are you doing?” Ms. Carmen asks.

“I’m listening to the stars,” Keith says.

✧✧✧

Keith is nine the first time he hears the name Takashi Shirogane.

The headline, splashed across the top of every news app and web page on March 1 the year Keith is in fourth grade, reads GALAXY GARRISON STUDENT FIRST PILOT TO ALSO INTERFACE.

Keith pulls it up on his school-issued tablet as soon as he’s settled at his desk, five minutes before the start of his school day. He skims quickly.

> _Takashi Shirogane, 16, studying to be a pilot at the Galaxy Garrison, yesterday announced his acceptance into the Garrison’s interfacer program. He will be the first student to combine interfacing with another of the Garrison’s programs of study._
> 
> _“I understand the rigorous nature of the interfacer program,” said Shirogane, whose double-focused studies have been approved by Garrison officials. “And I believe I am up to the challenge of completing both the pilot track and the interfacer track at the same time.”_
> 
> _When asked why he would choose to pursue both programs, despite the risks inherent to interfacing, Shirogane said, “As a pilot, I’m learning to move among the stars and planets, to navigate a ship and its crew safely from one location to another. We already know that our sensors can only tell us so much about space, which is where interfacers come in. So it seems to me that learning to pilot without also learning to interface is like trying to fly with one eye shut. I want to be able to read my surroundings and my instruments, and I also want to be able to hear what the stars have to say. Being able to pilot and interface will make me better at doing both.”_

“Oh my _gosh_ ,” Keith’s best friend Amy says in his ear, startling him from his reading. She grins at him, gap-toothed, pointing at his tablet. “I saw that when I was on the bus. This Takashi guy is maybe the coolest person ever.”

“Yeah,” Keith agrees, breathless with the possibility of it. No one has ever studied interfacing and another discipline before. If Takashi Shirogane can do it, Keith can do _anything_.

✧✧✧

A photograph:

Keith Kogane’s bedroom, aged 11.

Furniture: A twin bed covered in a dark blue comforter, shoved up against one wall. A matching night-stand. On the wall opposite, a short pine dresser and a plain desk.

A bulletin board on the wall over the desk has various home-printed photos from the most recent unmanned spacecraft, Wayfarer, to photograph all five of Pluto’s moons. Tacked up beside these is a scientific diagram of an interfacer’s suit, a picture of Keith with a frizzy brown-haired girl, and a list, scrawled in Keith’s hand, titled ‘Get Into The Garrison List.’

The image is high-resolution enough, that, when magnified, Keith’s checklist can be seen to read:

> **Get Into The Garrison List:**
> 
> \- Good grades (Bs to As only)  
>  \- Letter of recommendation from a teacher  
>  \- Score 1300 or above on the Science and Exploration Aptitude Test  
>  \- Complete both junior interfacers training camps  
>  \- Study interfacing!

Strewn across the surface of the desk is a small handcrafted model of the Wayfarer, a set of VR goggles and an accompanying game cartridge titled ‘Flight: Planes of the 20th Century,’ and a stack of books with names like _Astroexploration: A Dictionary of Terms_ , _Pilots – In Space!_ , _The Luminescent Burning of Space: Being An Account of the First Human Interfacers_ , and 4 volumes of a manga series called _Moon Genesis_.

Glow-in-the-dark plastic stars are adhered to the ceiling in the shapes of various constellations, and there are so many posters of various nebulae, star systems, planets, and myriad spacecraft (both real and imagined) on the walls that the small poster of American singer Mariah Carey and the hand-drawn Moon Genesis art (signed, Amy Wakeham) stick out noticeably amongst their fellows. 

A poster over the bed, clearly the centerpiece of the room, features a young Takashi Shirogane wearing the form-fitting grey suit of an interfacer-in-training. He’s pointing at the viewer and grinning. The caption reads I WANT YOU FOR THE GALAXY GARRISON.

✧✧✧

In sixth grade, Keith’s father agrees to allow him to attend Pine Hills Preparatory, a middle school aimed at readying high-achieving students for a variety of specialized high schools. PHP graduates most often filter into military boarding school or the nearest school of science, but they have also been known to attend the Galaxy Garrison at the start of their freshman year. The idea is that simply attending PHP will give Keith a better shot at Garrison admission.

It’s a good plan, except that Keith is there on a scholarship and he’s got nothing in common with the other students, who come from wealthy families with 2.4 children and a dog, and, perhaps more to the point, married parents who are very invested in their children’s success.

Keith’s just got himself, and his Japanese-American dad with the thick southern burr and the blue-collar job in the local electronics factory. It’s a little family, but it’s _Keith’s_ , and nobody gets to talk bad about it.

This is how Keith ends up in the principal’s office within the first week: 

There’s a bigger kid, a seventh grader, in his starched white polo shirt and his self-aggrandizing smirk, and he says, “I heard the new kid’s dad can’t even afford to pay for the lunches on campus, that’s why Kogane’s always packing a lunch.”

Keith walks across the cafeteria and says, “What did you say about my dad?”

The Polo Shirt is ten inches taller than Keith and on the basketball team. He says, “I _said_ , if your dad’s so poor he can’t even afford to feed you, maybe he should send you to a different school. You know, one a little more on your _level_.”

Keith breaks his nose. 

“Oh my _gosh_ ,” Amy says, when he calls her that weekend. “You broke a guy’s nose? You, Keith Kogane, broke. A kid’s. Nose.”

“He was making fun of my dad,” Keith says, petulant.

“You’re my favorite person in the world,” Amy says gleefully. “But seriously? That? That was a terrible idea you idiot, this is your _first week of classes_ , you’re supposed to be making a good impression.”

“He deserved it,” Keith mutters.

“Okay, but? You’re never going to get into the Garrison if you’ve got fights and stuff on your record. I mean c’mon, what do I always say?”

“Amy,” Keith warns.

“Keith,” Amy says, and he can hear her breathing loudly into the phone in what he’s pretty sure is meant to be a dramatic pause, and then she says, “What would Takashi-senpai do?”

“Oh my god,” Keith says, throwing himself back on his bed. “You’re the worst. I hate you.”

“No you don’t,” Amy says primly.

“ _Second Lieutenant Shirogane_ ,” Keith says, with dignity, “would always stick up for what he believed in.”

“Uh-huh,” Amy says.

There is a pause.

“Probably he would have found a way to resolve the conflict without physical violence,” Keith says grudgingly.

The school year wears on, and as much as Keith wants to live up to the example of his personal hero, he finds himself at odds with the other Pine Hills students more often than not. His grades are harder to keep up then they were at his old elementary school, both because the classes are more academically rigorous and because the subjects are getting more intensive as he ages. He gets into fights, although not often physical ones after that first time, on a semi-regular basis.

It takes joining the Virtual Reality Gamers Club, midway through sixth grade, before Keith starts to really make any new friends. Most of the kids in the club are just really into gaming, which Keith is, but not like that, not when he’s got so much to do to make his dream of being an interfacer come true. But Andres, one of the other kids in Keith’s grade who also wants to make it into the Garrison, brings some military-grade flight simulators that his mom brought home from work for the club to try and invites Keith, and Keith is _hooked_. He’s good at them, too, good at almost every simulation he tries, and eventually he and Andres, who wants to be a pilot, bond over their mutual love of flight.

✧✧✧

In seventh grade, Keith gets better and better at piloting in the flight simulations. The VR Club starts competing in a gaming league, most of the club signing up to compete in the fencing and sharpshooting competitions, but Andres and Keith join the piloting ones. The club makes it to nationals before they are disqualified. 

✧✧✧

The Junior Interfacers Summer Camps are designed to give a boost to middle schoolers who want the chance to study interfacing, but whose parents can’t afford private tutors. Retired Master Sergeant Ryley Kline was a rare case, having enlisted in the Unified Astroexploration Alliance and only afterwards discovered their potential as an interfacer. Most interfacers are commissioned officers, graduating from the Galaxy Garrison or another similar academy outside of North America and beginning with the rank of Second Lieutenant, but Ryley worked their way up the ranks from an enlisted Private, and as a result they’re committed to helping those with interfacer potential get the resources they never had.

“Okay, Second Years,” Ryley says, addressing Keith’s group when he and the others arrive at camp the summer Keith is 13. “You all learned meditation and focus in camp last year. We’re going to take that to the next level this summer, and see how well you guys can filter information out when you’re being bombarded with it. That means a lot of practice in the Noise Room, plus exercises and games designed to improve your information processing speeds.”

The other campers buzz with quiet excitement, eager to test themselves, to learn, to grow closer to their goal of reaching out to the stars and hearing them speak back. They are young and bright-eyed and eager, brimming with their belief that they can do anything they set their minds to. They have Ryley’s aid, and their parent’s support, and how can any of this possibly go wrong? They will be the next generation of interfacers.

Then everything begins to go wrong.

Keith has always been accused of having a short attention span, his teachers complaining that he was easily distracted in class and pulled impulsive little pranks on other students. But it has been less noticeable as he’s gotten older, and his intense focus on the goal of becoming an interfacer has seemed to prove that Keith has merely grown out of it.

But faced with a summer course designed entirely to test his focus, Keith finds himself slipping further and further behind his campmates. He can’t hold the thread of Ryley’s assignments. Ryley plays memory games with them, and the simple ones are fine, looking at a screen for a few seconds and remembering as many details as possible to write down after it goes away, but the games get harder, and Keith doesn’t improve as quickly as everyone else does. He can remember details but he can’t parse them out from a sea of information, not quickly, which is what Ryley demands. Then they start in on the Noise Room, a small, soundproofed room with screens on three walls and speakers all around, and Keith sits there, with sound from half a dozen different sources assaulting his ears and every screen on the walls showing a different vid, news videos and nature videos and war documentaries, audio of newscasters and weather men and a novel read aloud playing at the same time. Ryley tells him to pick a single voice out of all that madness and report back on what it says when he comes out of the room, but Keith _can’t_ , his senses bouncing between all of the stimuli thrown at him. He gets slowly, agonizingly, marginally better at it, and then Ryley changes the game, gives him _more_ stimuli, says to pick out _only_ the person talking about space out of all the other noises. Keith listens till it feels like his ears are going to bleed, but he can only pick out that voice, the right one, part of the time, and it’s _so much_ , too much, all at once, till all Keith wants is to put his head between his knees and _scream_.

Ryley lets him stay a week longer than the rest of the Second Years, works with him one on one to get this, but when Keith goes home at the end of it all with the extra assignments Ryley has given him for practice, all Keith can think about is the pity on Ryley’s face as he watches Keith’s dad pick him up.

✧✧✧

In eighth grade, Keith’s pilot scores keep improving. That year, at the National Competition of Simulated Piloting in November, Andres takes first and Keith takes second in their grade level.

He keeps practicing Ryley’s exercises all fall semester, and he takes a test Ryley sends him to determine his progress at about the same time as the finals before winter break. He doesn’t get an email back with the results from the test; what he does get is a request for a video conference with both Keith and his dad. Keith doesn’t think this is good news.

He’s right.

“Well now, don’t keep us in suspense,” Keith’s dad drawls, when they’ve got Ryley up on screen. “Tell us how Keith did on that there test you sent him.”

“Mr. Kogane, Keith,” Ryley says, folding their calloused hands on the table in front of them and leveling a steady, serious expression at the camera. “I have to be honest with you, Keith didn’t pass.” Keith’s dad sputters.

“What does that mean?” Keith interrupts, desperation filling him up. That test was the last straw, Keith’s final hope that he could meet Ryley’s standards and prove himself worthy of becoming an interfacer in training. He has worked for _months_ to pass it.

Keith knows what it means that he failed.

“I’m afraid it means that I can’t write you a recommendation letter for the Garrison’s interfacer program, Keith,” Ryley says gravely.

“Now, see here,” Keith’s dad starts, and he probably says a lot of things about how hard Keith has worked and how dedicated he is and how badly he wants this, but Keith doesn’t hear it over the rushing in his ears, the total and crushing sense of _failure_ that swamps him. To be an interfacer is all Keith wants, everything he has dreamed about since he was eight years old. Suddenly he thinks about his old idol Takashi Shirogane, who is a First Lieutenant now, certified as both a pilot and an interfacer. _I’ll never get the chance to meet Takashi at his level now_ , Keith realizes. His eyes water, and he grits his teeth to stop the tears.

“I’m not trying to be cruel with this decision, Mr. Kogane,” Ryley is saying, and they look right at Keith. “I know how much this dream means to Keith, and believe me, I _wish_ I could make it happen for him. But the truth is, not everyone can be an interfacer. Keith, you’ve come a long way, and you have an excellent grasp of the theory of what it takes to be an interfacer, but I’m sorry, with your current concentration and information processing scores, if you put on an intefacer’s suit and plug in, Keith, it _will_ kill you. And I can’t in good conscience recommend you, for your sake or the Garrison’s.”

“I get it,” Keith says, stiffly, when his dad lapses into silence. He gets up from the kitchen table and then, he’s not sure why, maybe because he’s thinking of Takashi, he bows towards Ryley’s face on the projection hovering over the table instead of saluting. “Thank you for everything, Master Sergeant Kline.”

He goes to his room, locks the door, and climbs into bed, turning his back on Takashi’s face to cry into his pillow.

✧✧✧

Keith is fourteen the first time he looks into a mirror and says, “I am never going to be an interfacer.”

“Son, I am so, so sorry,” Keith’s dad says, when Keith emerges from his room the next morning. He has made waffles for breakfast, garnished with strawberries, which are out of season, with real bacon on the side. It definitely cost more than Keith knows they really have to spend. He thinks about the cost of interfacer camp and the leftover tuition that his scholarship to attend Pine Hills doesn’t cover, all the money Keith’s dad has spent on him that will probably go to waste now. He eats the waffles with whipped cream, and hugs his dad after.

“Well, shit,” Amy says, when Keith tells her, and she’s quiet for a long time. Then: “I’m spending the night at your house this weekend and we’re binge-watching all your favorite crappy horror movies.”

Andres says, “Want to fly some spaceships?”

“God, yes,” Keith says, wanting the controls in front of his hands again, wanting to be good at _something_ for a while.

They’ve been in Andres’ parents basement for about two hours when Andres says, in a lull while the next scene loads, “Why don’t you apply for the Garrison’s pilot program instead?”

“What.” Keith says, not paying attention, jittering his leg impatiently where he sits.

Andres pauses the simulation and pulls off his VR goggles.

“I’m serious. You’ve been attending PHP for the last two years, your grades are good, and we got a lot of recognition when we placed at the sim pilot nationals. You’re good, Keith.” He grins. “Maybe not as good as me, but good enough to get into the Garrison. I did some research and we’ve put in like, a hundred more hours of flight time than the average Garrison recruit.”

Keith stares at him.

“I know it’s not interfacing but like, think of it this way, at least you don’t have to worry about your brain combusting every time you clock on to work. And you can _still_ get to space.”

“I don’t have anyone to write me a recommendation letter anymore,” Keith says. He put all his hope in getting a letter from Master Sergeant Kline.

“Ms. Naples is writing mine,” Andres says, naming their advisor for VR Club. “I _guarantee_ you she’d write one for you too.”

“Yeah?” Keith says, and he remembers what it’s like to breathe again.

✧✧✧

Piloting is not interfacing, Andres is right about that, but Keith is a good pilot, and he likes it, even if piloting has always been a hobby and never a goal. Perhaps better, being a pilot will bring Keith closer to Lieutenant Shirogane in some small way, even if it’s not the way Keith has always planned. That’s something. Keith wants to be worthy of him.  
Ms. Naples writes his recommendation letter. Keith, having cancelled his appointment, re-signs up to take the Science and Exploration Aptitude Test. Keith’s dad signs the application for Garrison admission and pays the application fee.

Two weeks before anyone is supposed to hear back about their admission status, both Andres and Keith are contacted by Garrison officials and invited to test for early acceptance. They both ace the pilot simulation and the general knowledge test put to them, and they both get put on the advanced pilot track before they’ve even been fully enrolled.

✧✧✧

Keith is not quite fifteen the first time he dons a Galaxy Garrison uniform, looks a final time at the poster of Takashi Shirogane on the wall of his childhood bedroom, and says, “Well, I guess I’m going to be a pilot, Takashi.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title for this chapter comes from the poem [Starlight](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/starlight) by William Meredith.


	3. interlude the first (an interview)

**A newsvid from the North American Public Broadcasting Network (NAPBN), original airdate Saturday, August 11, 2074:**

NAPBN anchor Jay Duncan is smartly dressed in a slim-fitting navy suit and pink tie. He sports one of the distinctive hairstyle of the 2070s, the reverse quiff: his red hair is shaved close to the skin on the back of his head, but he has a long fringe swept forwards over his eyebrows. He is seated in an armchair on a small stage, across from guest Bharati Pramanik. Bharati is dressed more casually, wearing orange skinny jeans, canvas sneakers, and a cobalt t-shirt with the 2071 version of the United Astroexploration Alliance logo on it.

“Welcome to JayTalk, I’m your host Jay Duncan, and I have with me today Bharati Pramanik, the Unified Astroexploration Alliance’s top expert on the relatively new science of interfacing,” Jay begins, looking at the camera as he speaks.

“Good evening,” Bharati says, smiling bright and wide and animated. Her teeth gleam under the stage lights.

“Bharati, you manage the UAA’s department for interfacer research, is that correct?”

“That’s right,” she says, crossing one leg over the other and leaning forward to clasp her hands around her knee. “And let me tell you, Jay, it’s an exciting time to be studying interstellar-human interfacing right now.”

“You’re referring to the recent tests aboard the Chinese satellite Jiāng Lái?”

“Right!” Bharati says, grinning again. “See, up till now, we’ve only practiced interfacing from the ground, from earth, _inside_ the earth’s atmosphere. Miriam Epstein, you may know, was the first person to discover interfacing during her work on the Square Kilometre Array in 2057. She started experimenting with the then relatively new open-source brainwave-reading tech that Lit Media had developed for use in virtual reality video games, tweaking it, figuring out a way to interface - hah! - it with the array. What if you could plug a human brain, like, _directly_ into the array? It’d never been done before. Epstein had no idea what would happen -- her critics said, well, the brain’s not made for that kind of information overload; they said, the technology isn’t at all compatible, that’s not how the array _works_. But Epstein persisted! And when she tried plugging herself into the array’s data-gathering streams, bam!” Bharati claps her hands together suddenly. “Instantaneous access to information no human had ever been able to see before.”

Jay is leaning in close to his guest, a look of fascination on his face as she gesticulates. She starts ticking things off with the fingers of her left hand.

“Star-memory, images of the formation of our solar system, the location of Planet X, all injected straight into Epstein’s visual cortex. And that was what she got in the first five minutes! Imagine, having the answers to questions we humans have been asking since the beginning of our conscious existence, just suddenly dropped into your brain.”

“Even today, it’s still pretty wild,” Jay agrees.

Bharati nods eagerly.

“And of course, interfacing is incredibly dangerous, with the sheer volume of information you’re receiving, but that’s life! That’s science! We take risks for knowledge. For a long time we were satisfied with interfacing using telescope arrays around the planet, because we didn’t know any better, and because the data we were gaining was so historic anyways. And then,” Bharati waves a hand wildly, “you know, 2059, Epstein spends too long in the data steam, and she goes into a coma from which she never comes out, so we learned that there had to be precautions in place to protect the scientists, who were just then beginning to be known as interfacers.”

“That dampened public opinion about interfacing for a while, didn’t it?” Jay interrupts. “The world was kind of shocked by the loss of Miriam Epstein, and some people said maybe the data wasn’t worth the risks.”

“Oh, sure,” Bharati agrees. “But there were still risk-takers, people following in the path of Epstein and all the scientists before her who took chances in the name of discovery. It’s really incredible that some of these first generation interfacers kept at it, kept pushing the envelope,” she mimes pushing forward through some great pressure with her hands, “to see what they could discover, when the risks were insanity or death for themselves, and condemnation from some of the major faith communities who were, you know, decrying these scientists, these _explorers_ , as liars and con artists for reporting the information they were uncovering. Public opinion was not really in their favor, their reputations were at risk, and there was a danger to their health, but _still_ they kept at it.”

“The development of your department at the UAA is really what helped turn around the tide of public opinion, wasn’t it?” Jay asks. The camera changes angles to a wider view of both host and guest.

“There were a few folks at the UAA that recognized the vast potential for interfacing to improve the quality of our astroexploration programs right from the start, but it took a while for an interfacing division to get off the ground. Ten years, to be precise, and a lot of lobbying by folks like myself who said, you know, it’s not enough just to weigh in on the discoveries that interfacers are making across the globe, we really gotta have interfacers of our own, out there making those discoveries. So that’s what my department has been doing in the last five years.  
We’ve pioneered safety standards to protect interfacers while they’re doing their work, and this year we even partnered with the Galaxy Garrison to start recruiting interfacers from among the young astroexplorers they’re working to train up.”

Jay nods along. “Right, right.” He looks at the camera. “All right folks, you’ve heard from Bharati Pramanik, top interfacing expert from the UAA, on where interstellar-human interfacing stands today. But back to the news on everyone’s mind -- what can you tell us about this breakthrough on the satellite Jiāng Lái that we’ve been hearing so much about, Bharati?”

“Last week, Chinese astronaut Liu Wen became the first person to successfully interface outside of earth’s atmosphere,” Bharati says. She’s barely sitting anymore, perched on her chair with both feet tucked underneath her like she’s going to spring up from her seat at any second.

“This is the first time anyone has interfaced from space?” Jay clarifies.

“Yes!” Bharati practically shouts. “Can you imagine the potential now that we know that it’s possible for an interfacer to link into the cosmic data stream without the interference of our atmosphere? Satellites are just the start, Jay; in a few years, we could have have astroexplorers interfacing from rocket ships, from the moon, from Mars and beyond! How will that change the data? Will it give us more information about the characteristics of the farther planets in our solar system? Wen’s team is still analyzing what she uncovered in that first try, but Jay, we’ve already seen discoveries beyond our collective imagination since Epstein’s days. The possibilities of what we might find, now that we can interface in a way that is safer for our scientists even beyond the reach of our atmosphere, are absolutely endless.”

“Fascinating,” Jay says, shaking his head. “Well, folks, you’ve heard from interfacing expert Bharati Pramanik. Next up, will the Galaxy Garrison create an entirely new track for cadets wishing to study the science of interfacing? Stay tuned.”

A circular logo containing the words JayTalk in Helvetica font appears, followed momentarily by the logo for the North American Public Broadcasting Network. 

A voice-over says, “JayTalk is made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to your local NAPBN station by viewers like you. Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanna make it clear that I'm not a scientist and I'm 80% sure most of the science in this chapter (and the fic as a whole) is blatantly wrong. Sorry 'bout that. I just want Keith & Shiro to be able to listen to the song of the stars ok and for some reason I decided a hard scifi fic was the way to make that come into being. LARGE SHRUGS.

**Author's Note:**

> Come [find me on tumblr](https://thecryoftheseagulls.tumblr.com)! I need more Voltron friends over there tbh.


End file.
